Taylor Swift has broken her silence about the planned terror attacks that saw a series of concerts on her Eras Tour canceled in Austria earlier this month.
“Having our Vienna shows cancelled was devastating,” said Swift today in a long post online.
“The reason for the cancellations filled me with a new sense of fear, and a tremendous amount of guilt because so many people had planned on coming to those shows,” she added of the trio of shows that were pulled from her European schedule on August 7. “But I was also so grateful to the authorities because thanks to them, we were grieving concerts and not lives,” Swift stated just hours after finishing up another SRO show at London’s Wembley Stadium.
“Let me be very clear: I am not going to speak about something publicly if I think doing so might provoke those who would want to harm the fans who come to my shows,” the Tortured Poets Department singer went on to say Wednesday online of why she waited until after her last UK performance of the tour was in the can. “In cases like this one, ‘silence’ is actually showing restraint, and waiting to express yourself at a time when it’s right to. My priority was finishing our European tour safely, and it is with great relief that I can say we did that.”
With three arrests in the Austrian case, public safety officials in the country said that after a search in one of the radicalized suspects’ homes, police found machetes, knives, chemical explosives, ISIS propaganda, and 21,000 euros in counterfeit bills.
Coming one day after the last London show of the Eras Tour and the release of the official music video for “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” Swift’s remarks reflect a bit of downtime for the busy artist who has been on tour for well over a year as well as piling up on Grammys, Kansas City Chiefs games, a blockbuster movie and releasing a new album earlier this summer.
Tragically, this summer also saw a fatal knife attack at a UK dance class themed after Swift. The killing of three children by a 17-year-old boy in Southport in the north of England was further bloodied by racist riots that broke out for days all over the country after disinformation that the perpetrators was a Muslim. Swift herself met with families of the victims in London on August 19.
A star for over a decade, Swift has turned into a full-on cultural phenomenon over the past two years, as well as a billionaire. In that, the singer has become a political force unto herself that transcends the Blue state and Red state divide.
Last week, Donald Trump falsely claimed Swift had endorsed him as the Republican’s campaign said that “Swifties for Trump is a massive movement that grows bigger every single day.” Based on Swift’s 2020 backing of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as the ever ballooning Swifties for Harris, there was anticipation that the singer would fly into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week and endorse the VP. While the calendar made such an appearance possible, with Swift’s European tour over on August 20 and now no new dates until October in Miami, the reality was unpractical on a variety of levels.
“Everybody loves Taylor, but having her here would overshadow everything,” a DNC insider told Deadline earlier this week of a rumored appearance by the “Shake It Off” singer on August 22 as Harris gives her acceptance speech as the first Black woman nominated for president by a major American political party. “Think about it, no one would remember a word the Vice President said in her acceptance speech. All the headlines would be about Swift.”
